Ex-city supervisor set to plead guilty

January 07, 2006

CHICAGO — A former supervisor in the city's Department of Streets and Sanitation is expected to plead guilty in federal court to obstructing justice for directing an underling to lie to federal agents, his lawyer said Friday.

Attorney Barry Pechter declined to say, however, if Bruno Bertucci, formerly with the Bureau of Forestry, has been cooperating with federal authorities. In September Bertucci was accused in a criminal complaint of sharing in a $5,000 bribe for arranging for the removal of two healthy trees in the way of a construction project in Lincoln Park in 2004.

A city crew was sent to the scene by Bertucci, authorities charged, but the trees survived after neighbors complained.

The charges were an offshoot of the ongoing probe of the city's scandal-ridden Hired Truck Program. The $5,000 payoff allegedly was offered by former city worker John "Quarters" Boyle, a central figure in the Hired Truck scandal who is serving a 7-year prison term for an unrelated bribery scheme.

A member of the crew sent to remove the trees later cooperated with the FBI and secretly tape-recorded a meeting in which Bertucci told him to lie to federal agents, according to the charges.

"All you do is stick to your story" that an alderman wanted the trees removed, Bertucci said, according to the criminal complaint. "You just stick to your story because there ain't no way they could prove anything."